wtf_man wrote on Feb 3, 2012, 15:44:Although I loved Deus Ex, I think Ultima Underworld was the best title (creatively - not graphically) he was involved in... followed by the System Shocks and Deus Ex (in no particular order... they were all awesome).

Let's not forget Crusader and Wings of Glory. Those were great games too. They weren't System Shock or Deus Ex, but they were certainly great.

Would be nice if there was a bigger graphical difference between the 360/PS3. Might make all these ridiculous patches and installs worth the trouble.

In general, when there is a graphical difference between PS3 and 360, 360 edges out the win because of its more powerful GPU. It's too bad most PS3 games have to waste all that computational power to patch deficiencies elsewhere in the system, like the weak GPU and poor memory architecture.

DX never came out on console... That's most likely why he's never played it.

Actually, both Deus Ex and Invisible War came out on console. Deus Ex: The Conspiracy was the PS2 version of the original, and it was the same game with a consolized interface. Then, of course, Deus Ex: Invisible War came out on Xbox.

Still won't buy anything from Creative Labs after the "shadow patent" they got after seeing a technical presentation of Doom 3. (Yeah a sound company is going to be expert renderers Then they turned around and used it against id software. Thieves.

You have your facts very wrong. Creative Labs' engineers discovered the z-fail algorithm in October 1998, a year before id published anything about Carmack's independent discovery. At the time, Creative was still in the graphics business and had experts in graphics programming and rendering on staff. Creative was also the first to apply the algorithm to a game. They released a stencil shadow patch for Unreal (that's right, Unreal 1), which was released years before Doom 3 was.

So... the natural evolution of a browser is an OS. But to include a browser with an OS constitutes monopoly?

Wow, that was my thought exactly. But I forgot that it's illegal for Microsoft because they are an evil corporation that wants to make every person their personal servant. Google, on the other hand, is a benevolent company that has a vision of delivering puppies and ponies to every child in the world, so OS/browser integration is legal for them.

no, you probably think on spaceships and space fights, but those fighters have to sleep and eat somewhere. They probably also have families some planet living their own thing. If everyone just fights who's left to do the rest?

Yes, but we can sleep, eat, and hang out with our families right here on planet Earth. Those are mundane, every day activities that don't belong in a Star Wars game.

There is nothing wrong with having it IN there, I mean, some people want to play Star Wars and pretend to be Sy Noodles and the Modal Tones.

I see where you're coming from, but I disagree. No one who watched Star Wars thought to themselves "Wow, that movie was so awesome. I want to be Sy Noodles and the Modal Tones". Every minute spent on features like crafting, dancing, and music is a minute not spent on a combat system, narrative & storytelling, force powers, and other things that will make it a cool Star Wars game. I really hope Bioware ditches the standard MMO feature checklist. MMO developers need a swift kick in the balls, and I Bioware provides hope of delivering said kick.

If Bioware is sane, they will use SWG as a checklist for everything to avoid doing in SWTOR. SWG was a complete abomination of a game. Crafting? Really? It's STAR WARS. I want lightsabers, Jedi, and epic battles. Bioware should not spend any time on features such as dancing, playing music, and crafting. They should focus on what is cool about the Star Wars universe, and on what they are good at. The more SWTOR feels like a KOTOR game, the better.

As a method of doing volume shadows zfail is well-known among graphics programmers, and Creative in no way invented it - they just got to the patent office first. It is described in numerous articles and books, not one of which says "btw if you use this you will have to pay the 'tards at Creative".

Actually, at the time of discovery by Creative, zfail was unknown amongst graphics programmers. Stencil shadows were a well known technique, but eliminating artefacts of shadow volume intersection with the near plane was either ignored or solved analytically by clipping the shadow volume against the near plane and patching up the holes.